ORLANDO, Fla. – Several Central Florida businesses were recently targeted by extortionists who threatened to damage the companies’ reputations with negative Google reviews unless the owners paid for the online comments to be removed, News 6 has learned.

In each case, dozens of one-star reviews were posted on the companies’ Google advertisement pages with critical comments such as “terrible service” and “rude staff”.

The business owners later received text messages from Pakistani phone numbers demanding money to remove the negative reviews and avoid additional ones from being posted.

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“They start to panic as they see their Google ratings start to plummet that day,” said Kay Dean, a former federal fr

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